Possibly the Coolest Thing Ever

How cool is this? It’s the Chinese edition of Nightmare! I knew this was in the works, but I didn’t know when it would be finished. The Chinese publisher that licensed the Chinese language rights, “Gobooks & Sitak Group,” was kind enough to send me a copy of the finished book, and it looking through it is mind-blowing. (Click on any of these images for larger versions.)

Above you can see the cover. Chinese books are read in reverse order to how we read, so the spine is on the right instead of the left. Speaking of the spine, here’s a closer look.

And here’s the back cover.

First page.

Chinese readers read vertically, right to left. It’s fascinating to turn the pages and try to wrap my mind around reading this way.

Check out this closeup of a page. Instead of a straight line to divide up sections of a chapter, like what’s used in the English version, someone at the Chinese publishing house apparently had the idea to use the three alchemical symbols as section dividers. You can see them here in the center of the image. Genius! I wish we’d thought to do this in the English version!

Another interesting feature are the footnotes. Sporadically throughout the book are these footnotes for cultural references and other things that Chinese readers might not be familiar with. Flipping through the first few chapters, I see footnotes for “Grinch,” “cold spot,” “Agnostic,” “Ghostbusters,” and “Linda Blair.”

The Chinese publisher kept the formatting we used for the flashback chapters, with the surrounding journal-style page frames around it. They also used the opening pages of those chapters where there are photos and descriptions of the real-world locations described. Here’s how one of those pages looks in Chinese.

The one thing I can say for certain about the Chinese version of Nightmare is that it wasn’t easy to make. My thanks to Gobooks & Sitak Group for putting a tremendous amount of thought and attention to detail into this. I couldn’t be happier!